The Terrible Cost Of Porn

I’m sorry if the graphic details from this piece in the Telegraphupset you, but we cannot turn away from this demon. In the piece, the writer recalls a dinner conversation among mothers talking about how hard it is to raise kids in a culture where pornography is ubiquitous. Excerpt:

A couple of the women present said that they had forced themselves to have toe-curlingly embarrassing conversations with their teenagers on the subject. “I want my son to know that, despite what he might see on his laptop, there are things you don’t expect a girl to do on a first date, or a fifth date, or probably never,” said Jo.

A GP, let’s call her Sue, said: “I’m afraid things are much worse than people suspect.” In recent years, Sue had treated growing numbers of teenage girls with internal injuries caused by frequent anal sex; not, as Sue found out, because she wanted to, or because she enjoyed it – on the contrary – but because a boy expected her to. “I’ll spare you the gruesome details,” said Sue, “but these girls are very young and slight and their bodies are simply not designed for that.”

Her patients were deeply ashamed at presenting with such injuries. They had lied to their mums about it and felt they couldn’t confide in anyone else, which only added to their distress. When Sue questioned them further, they said they were humiliated by the experience, but they had simply not felt they could say no. Anal sex was standard among teenagers now, even though the girls knew that it hurt.

There was stunned silence among the mothers around that dinner table, although I think some of us may have let out involuntary cries of dismay and disbelief.

For Sue’s surgery isn’t in some inner-city borough where kids may have been brutalised or come from cultures where such practices are commonly used as contraception. Sue works in the leafy heart of Hampshire. The girls presenting with incontinence were often under the age of consent and from loving, stable homes. Just the sort of kids who, only two generations ago, would have been enjoying riding and ballet lessons, and still looking forward to their first kiss, not being coerced into violent sex by some kid who picked up his ideas about physical intimacy from a dogging video on his mobile.

You think that being “nice” people, and maybe putting your kids in Christian school, is going to protect them from this? You’re dreaming. I get so fed up with Christina parents who have no restrictions on their kids’ access to technology, and who aren’t teaching them how to cope with it. They somehow think that either their kids won’t find porn, or that everybody uses it, so how bad can it be, really?

They don’t want to face the reality because if they did, they would have to institute radical changes in their family’s life, including forcing their kids to be weirdos in their peer group.

But what is the alternative? At a conservative Christian college not long ago, a campus minister told me that every single young man he works with, helping them to prepare for seminary after graduation, is addicted to pornography (meaning that they use it compulsively, and find it impossible to stop, even though they want to). Sixteen young men — conservative, churchgoing men who want to serve God and others as pastors — caught in that trap. You think it can’t happen to your kids? Really?

Nearly half of Japanese people are entering their 30s without any sexual experience, according to new research.

The country is facing a steep population decline as a growing number of youngsters abstain from sex and avoid romantic relationships.

Some men claimed they “find women scary” as a poll found that 43 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins.

One woman, when asked why they think 64 per cent of people in the same age group are not in relationships, said she thought men “cannot be bothered” to ask the opposite sex on dates because it was easier to watch internet porn.

It’s one thing to be a virgin because you choose to abstain until marriage, for religious or moral reasons. It’s quite another to be a virgin because you are too afraid of emotional and physical intimacy, and would rather sit home and watch porn.

We are conducting a radical experiment that has never before in history been tried, because it has never been possible. What happens to individuals and societies when images — moving images — of the most bizarre and violent sex acts imaginable can be instantly accessed by anyone, anywhere, at any time? What does that do to our brains, our minds, and our hearts? What does it to do us as a people?

I keep telling people that the Benedict Option is not about heading for the hills. But when I read stories like this, I think, “I should reconsider that.” True, wherever there is an Internet connection, pornography can find you. I don’t mean “the hills” in a geographical sense. I mean it metaphorically. By “the hills,” I mean a more radical separation from this culture of death.

Let’s say that our own children manage to get through childhood without having porn colonize their minds and hearts. One day, we want them to marry and start families, if that is their calling, right? Think about what the ubiquity of porn does to the prospect of finding life partners who are capable of loving them, in soul and body, in a caring, compassionate, righteous way? This is not a crisis that we can face adequately as individual families. We have to do it as a community. We have to do this as a community embedded in Weimar America, where there is widespread indifference or even contempt for our values. We not only have to do our utmost to protect our sons and our daughters from it, but we have to rescue those of our children who have been ensnared by it.

This British general practitioner is treating teenage girls under the age of consent for incontinence. They cannot keep from soiling themselves because the muscles in their rectums have been stretched out from anal sex. You want to turn away, I know. So do I. But we can’t. Nor can we turn away from the young men who have been convinced that demanding this of girls is something good and right and necessary.

First, by now, parents can’t be ignorant of technology. There are simple programs like Net Nanny that you can put on devices that children access to prevent teens and younger childrend from accessing inappropriate content. Schools and libraries have this software. If you can afford internet at home, you can afford the software. Secondly, talk with the parents of you kids friends and make sure they monitor their child’s internet access, if they don’t, don’t let your child spend time unaccompanied at their house.

Next you have to have honest conversations about sex with teenagers. Explain that porn is a fantasy. Just as you know you can’t really fly after watching Superman, a lot porn is created because it is a stunt.

For some reasons when liberals talk about teaching CONSENT, conservatives freak out. However, teaching young women and men that they own their bodies, means they can say NO if they don’t like something or don’t want to do something.

Most women that engage in anal sex at a young age are conservative. It is very popular in Muslim countries because it is a way young people can be sexual without the woman losing her virginty.

The problems in Japan are complex. On the one hand women can be professionals and work, but Japanese corporate culture is such that all employees work insane hours and women have to give up everything to be a wife/mother. Few men make enough money to afford to remove a woman from the work force. Becoming a housewife is lonely as your husband wont get home until 10 pm most nights. Porn isn’t the cause of their problems, just a symptom.

Japan’s demographic crisis is not primarily about porn – in fact, porn is WAY down on the list of causes.

Japanese culture is paradoxically prudish about sex in many ways, which I learn firsthand while teaching English there. You are expected to shower before and after sex every time. There’s a strong cultural concept that semen is “dirty”, and – possible TMI – two of fellow teachers mentioned that Japanese men often APOLOGIZED if they got any ejaculate on their partners.

The biggest difference is that sex in Japan is not a mutual sharing experience with both partners spontaneously doing whatever they feel like or enjoy whenever they feel like doing it. Sex has rules and sex has roles just as every social interaction in Japan has rules and roles. There is an active partner and a passive partner. Active means moving; passive means unmoving. In heterosexual sex, the active partner is always male, and the passive partner is always female.

You can’t have “Whoo-hoo! Go for it!” sex because both partners are constrained by their roles. The passive partner (obviously) because she can’t move, and the active partner because he has to take care of the passive partner, instructing her on what to do and exerting himself so that she has a good time.

Japanese guys are generally more stressed out by sex than western guys and that is because they are responsible for the sex; as the active male, the sex is their burden, they have to do everything, it’s all up to them. Sex equates not only (sometimes not even primarily) with ‘fun’ or ‘pleasure’, it also equates with ‘work’ and ‘obligation’.

I also can’t emphasise enough just how passive the passive partner is. The way a woman kisses is by submissively opening her mouth, not moving her tongue unless she is cued to do so; if she’s really feminine she won’t open her mouth at all, until she’s told to. Sometimes women will move around a (very) little during sex, but mostly not at all. The slang term for a woman who lies completely still in bed is maguro (tuna). For me, with my western sensibilities and preconceptions, calling someone a ‘tuna’ in bed sounds like an insult, conjuring up images of cold dead fish, but in Japan that word has a very positive connotation. Tuna’s an expensive delicacy.

All this leads sex to not be very fulfilling for men or women. I’m surprising people conclude watching porn is easier.

All that aside, most Japanese people will tell you the primary cause of their demographic crisis is the Japanese work culture. It is not uncommon for people to work 14 hours a day – hours and hours of overtime are just expected. You cannot expect to advance in your career unless you are willing to work such hours, and to work them without complaint. This doesn’t leave much time for relationships or child-rearing.

Second of all, women are expected to give up their careers after they become mothers. Women who go back to work after having children are heavily penalized professionally – and of course, they still have the crazy hours to deal with. This means Japanese couples can either forego having a child (which heavily violates cultural expectations of marriage), or they can struggle on one income. Living in any urban area in Japan isn’t cheap. You then have a woman at home with a child who is basically a single mother – her spouse will probably get home at 11 PM or 12 AM, go to sleep, then get up and leave at 6 or 7 AM.

Third – and this follows from the last factor – it’s not surprising then that most Japanese women want (or need, really) their spouse to highly financially successful, so their family isn’t constantly treading water financially. This puts of a lot of pressure on young Japanese men who want to get married. Talk to young Japanese men about why they aren’t in relationships, and they will immediately tell you that women’s high expectations are a huge part of the intimidation factor.

Fourth, traditional Japanese culture puts a huge value on meeting people’s needs without asking what they want or need. Being successful at this is viewed as a true measure of love in Japan, which causes all sorts of problems in relationships because (surprise!) people aren’t mind-readers. If you think young people worry about what potential mates think and feel in the West, in Japan this is jacked up by a factor of 100.

Let me quote another person who learned this firsthand:

“If you are Japanese and you like someone, you embark on a series of subtle, indirect stealth manoeuvres, because liking prohibits direct action, especially for women, but also for men.

Why is this the case? Japanese social interaction is all about intuiting the other person’s wishes without discussing them openly, at the same time that they are intuiting your wishes without discussing them openly, so that although nothing is ever verbalised, the two of you will always exist in a compromise position of equilibrium. If you like someone, that intuitive part goes into overdrive, because you should be able to understand everything about that person without them ever telling you, and you should be able to please them without ever asking how, even more than you would with a normal person. So it’s more important than ever to be indirect.”

“They cannot keep from soiling themselves because the muscles in their rectums have been stretched out from anal sex.”

With respect, this isn’t what’s happening. These girls aren’t “stretched out”. They have actually torn those muscles. Muscles don’t normally lose their ability to contract just because you stretch them (just think about exercise for a moment), unless the “stretch” is truly extreme. Childbirth would be one example.

To have anal sex safely, you need to stretch out and relax the muscle beforehand (with fingers or a toy). You need lots of lube, because the rectum isn’t self-lubricating, and you need to be mentally relaxed. If you do these things and your partner’s penis isn’t enormous, your rectum will function just as it did before. It also won’t hurt. Granted, it’s not going to feel as good for a woman as it does a man (since they have no prostate to stimulate), but it won’t lead to pain.

Neglecting any of these steps WILL lead to pain, tissue damage, or both.

Commercial porn rarely shows any of this on camera, so it’s not surprising that teenage boys concluded they could simply “jam it in” and go to town.

The persons who own the major porn outlets on the internet are known to all governmental authorities; but nobody touches them; why?
Yet, a little search in Google yields a wealth of data on such individuals. Interestingly, only a dozen or at most two dozen individuals control most of those porn outlets.
Neither in this article, nor in the comments was any mention of this fact. Why?
Those individuals are quite immune from attack, because they belong to the same “private club” of the mainstream media, and we all know the power of the mainstream media.
Moral of the story: to stop those pornography providers, one must dismantle the “private club” to which they belong.

[NFR: I see that you are posting from France. In the US, we have the First Amendment to the Constitution, which our Supreme Court, in all its majesty and wisdom, has interpreted to give wide latitude to the production and consumption of pornography. The government could not necessarily move meaningfully against those companies even if it wanted to. — RD]

This seems to me to be an important topic, even if you are of the non-religious, progressive persuasion.

It takes only a few minutes with a web browser to learn that there is a lot readily available pornographic material which is violent and dehumanizing, particularly with respect to the treatment of women. The transition from child to adult is difficult enough; early exposure to this kind of material only makes it harder.

It seems self evident that children need to be protected from some of the behaviours that are allowed to consenting adults, at least until such time as they can protect themselves and make their own judgements on those matters. Culturally, we seem to be losing the ability to do that, without getting bogged down in tribal politics.

Thanks for posting this. When I first started watching porn, I was fascinated with it. I know it was forbidden but it’s where I learned about sex. My parents never talked about sex and neither did my youth group at church. The only other place for info was from my buddies but they were for the most part just talking about what they saw too. tbh, it was exciting for awhile but I kept clicking links to stuff that I would never do with anyone. Problem is I can’t get them out of my head now and it feels like I’m a different guy and it’s not a good feeling. I wish I had never done porn in the first place but you can’t undo what you’ve done. And now I find the threshold for going back to porn is so low that I don’t know I’ve crossed it till I’m viewing it again. It doesn’t even seem like a conscious choice anymore.

I’ve heard arguments on why porn can be helpful but I don’t get it. In my experience it sucks you down a whirlpool into a darkness you can’t escape. I’ve had periods for weeks or even sometimes months of not watching but it always seems to be there. As much as I hate it, it’s like porn is a part of me now. Worse thing is, whatever was kinda exciting about it at first is gone, it’s just more of the same now. I wanted to end this on something good, but I’ve got nothing. Just don’t do it.

This is one of the things that leads people not to take the orthodox / traditionalist side seriously. The medical risks of anal sex exist regardless of the marital status of the people involved. (And as I pointed out above, I don’t think the marital status of the people involved would have mattered to a lot of church fathers either, including one as high ranking as St. John the Faster).

Because I’m not a manichean, I recognize that it is not black and white and that porn, like everything else in life, has its share of downsides. But we have actual evidence of how human beings react when Rod Drehers ideas of sexuality are dominant, and it’s absolutely horrifying. That you don’t feel the need to answer for those readily available statistical realities while reducing my argument to endorsing apocryphal stories of rectal damage to little girls reveal much about your tunnel vision on this issue.

I wouldn’t necessarily call the stories apocryphal (nor are the victims necessarily ‘little girls’), but I’m generally in agreement here.

What the sexual revolution has done is to imbue all male-female relations with a self-centered, transactional, intrinsically envious character. The whole post-Pill paradigm is that success in the sexual marketplace is the mark of a good life, and anything that impedes it is unjust and oppressive per se. Success in this paradigm is measured in comparative desirability, not intimacy: it is shown by being able to “trade up” — higher status partners, higher variety of experiences, higher frequency of orgasms. Bias against intimacy is built into the feminist ideal which rules even most Christian communities, where young marriage and childbearing are seen as failures of responsible parenthood. Shame is reserved for those who “settle” and give up the game.

I think think this is partly true, not completely. There’s no reason that ‘intimacy’ has to be seen as antithetical to a short term or casual relationship. But I do think you’re very much right about the way that the sexual revolution changed the way we think about ourselves and others, and made us all a lot more preoccupied with, as you say, ‘comparative desirability’ and ‘trading up’. I don’t know if there is really a solution to that, or what the solution might be.

This may appear to be a false equivalency, but hear me out. Pornography is defined as: printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. When the concept of pornography (explicit description or display of words/images –to stimulate “feelings”) is applied to other (non-sexual/erotic) aspects of life such as politics, finance, the 2nd Amendment, race, etc.; I am of the opinion the results are equally “terrible”. The pornographic mindset is more a symptom (of the human experience) than a disease. Again, it may seem a false equivalency or disingenuous to filter a discussion directed at the evils of pornography through the Bible in such a fashion, but “lust” is, for lack of a better word, the result of the concept of pornography applied to sex. For example, in my opinion, Christianity is not “terrible”. On the other hand, what I see as the Westboro Baptist Church’s pornographic approach to Christianity, is terrible. As such, when one removes the sexual context(or religious/moral aspects related to sexuality), and views “life” from a human/natural position; a pornographic approach to the election cycle, war-fighting, finance, the law, or even climate change is again, terrible. Is a child maimed, disfigured, or killed by an errant (or intentional) cluster bomb or drone strike, terrorist attack (Oklahoma City), or racially driven hate crime (1963 Birmingham church bombing) more/less terrible than a child scarred, maimed, or injured as a result of online pornography?

@Saul Goodman, you aren’t a researcher, are you? Regarding rape, did the rise of porn cause the concomitant decrease in other types of violent crime, too?

There’s some weak evidence that in Norway at least, porn may have increased the amount of rape. (More specifically, internet access increased rape, but I don’t know what would be the causative link besides porn).

This isn’t a point about commercialized / commodified sex in general (legalized prostitution almost certainly lowers rape rates), and it’s possibly only certain form of porn that are the problem, but it does seem that there’s a better case against, at least, unrestricted porn than a lot of people think.

[NFR: Even if it could be proven that Internet porn reduces the number of rapes, praising it for that would be like praising draconian police-state policies that lock up people for the slightest offense, because doing so reduces crime. — RD]

“First, by now, parents can’t be ignorant of technology. There are simple programs like Net Nanny that you can put on devices that children access to prevent teens and younger childrend from accessing inappropriate content. Schools and libraries have this software. If you can afford internet at home, you can afford the software.”

Olga I don’t disagree with any of this, however when it comes to talk of public policy the calculation does change. Situations where there are struggling single working parents who cannot be there all of the time. Parents who lack the sophistication for this, etc.

IMO the automatic default in the system should be that internet pornography cannot be accessed by children, period, without deliberate and active intervention by the parent.

The tech/whiz gurus will of course insist that this cannot be done, because technology, money, etc. But it can.

I’ve told the story on here several times about my friend, a single mom, who thought her son was using her laptop to access porn. He had previously accessed the Playboy website on his desktop, so not being very computer savvy she started with her google search there. Two more clicks after that and she was at a site that featured people defecating on each other.

Note that well: from Google to coprophilia in three relatively “random” clicks. If you don’t think this kind of thing can happen with kids you’re brain-dead.

They can’t make you drunk, but could no one call, text or message you, “Hey let’s go out and have a few”?
Maybe your friends aren’t into partying, and you are safe from that temptation, but we’re talking high school and college students here and I would be very surprised if youth party culture is not every bit as ubiquitous as I remember it in my misspent youth back in the Old Stoned Age.

Christians and socons are far from the only people concerned about internet porn. Parents of all political, religious and even sexual orientations worry about its effect on the young. Employers are on the prowl to root it out on the job. It’s even been cited in something like 53% of US divorces that go to trial. And lest we forget, one type of do-it-yourself internet porn helped contribute, however inadvertently, to sabotaging the election of a major US presidential candidate (thank you, Anthony Wiener). Time and Newsweek have both run cover stories on the problem. There’s even been a major motion picture, “Don Jon,” devoted to it. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a guy whose girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson, no less) demands he choose between porn and her, the film’s actually a serious look at the type of arrested development this supposedly harmless pastime can cause. (Warning: The film derives its rare flashes of humor from repeated scenes of its main character making a stilted weekly confession to a priest who clearly has no clue what he’s talking about.)

All this said, I am still taken aback by reports such as the one from that campus minister at a “conservative Christian college” who said every single candidate preparing for seminary training at the college is addicted to internet porn (!). Seriously? That would seem to say as much about the milieu those young men live in as it does US “culture” in general.

This LGBTQ affair has terribly metamorphosed into an ugly decadent beast.
It is this garishly public display of sexual mimicry that is abnormal, and almost all of it is displayed by males.
We have gone beyond the Sodom and Gomorrah syndrome.
But wait; there is hope.
I am confident that the non-LGBTQ men and women will reset the situation back to normal.

Sir, you must be new here. I’m actually anathema to the more militant LGBTQWERTY advocates (many of them happily heterosexual themselves). To be fair, there are one of two happily married gay men who see what I’ve advocated as a reasonable point of balance to promote peaceful coexistence.

I think homosexuality is an irrelevant outlier, the result of imperfect biochemistry, and not really worth much public attention, except to curb any criminal retaliation against people who are, or might be, or think of themselves as, gay.

I mentioned that ancient Greece had a different notion of homosexuality because it is a fact. The power relations you describe are sometimes evident. But so are male prostitutes, and so are military comrades, away from their wives for years at a time, who bonded together. In literature, Achilles and Patroclus are a good example, albeit Achilles also enjoyed having Briseus around. Meantime, wives were expected to be chaste as far as having children, but were free to have a good time with their handmaids.

I don’t consider any of that to be a paradigm for a healthy culture, but it is part of human history.

Hector, you may be right. What’s important is that human culture has varied, a lot, for many reasons.

Addendum: The stats usually cited for porn addiction among any given population group that admits to pornography use ranges from 20 to 28%, which seems high as it is. So that 100% claim re seminary candidates at a conservative Christian college is off the wall. Something’s wrong there. I’m not saying it’s the claim itself. But why on earth are that many Christian men addicted to porn? The fact that it’s readily available doesn’t seem explanation enough.

[NFR: I see that you are posting from France. In the US, we have the First Amendment to the Constitution, which our Supreme Court, in all its majesty and wisdom, has interpreted to give wide latitude to the production and consumption of pornography. The government could not necessarily move meaningfully against those companies even if it wanted to. — RD]

That’s not entirely true. There are vectors for attack: the copyright system.

Because I’m not a manichean, I recognize that it is not black and white and that porn, like everything else in life, has its share of downsides. But we have actual evidence of how human beings react when Rod Drehers ideas of sexuality are dominant, and it’s absolutely horrifying. That you don’t feel the need to answer for those readily available statistical realities while reducing my argument to endorsing apocryphal stories of rectal damage to little girls reveal much about your tunnel vision on this issue.

I wouldn’t necessarily call the stories apocryphal (nor are the victims necessarily ‘little girls’), but I’m generally in agreement here.

I’m listening. Show me my tunnel vision, and show me the stats. Start out slow, and give me the best piece of evidence you have first.

IMO the automatic default in the system should be that internet pornography cannot be accessed by children, period, without deliberate and active intervention by the parent.

I agree. This passive attitude that it would be impossible to do anything like that and that porn cannot in anyway be controlled is so frustrating. Stigmatizing it would be a start. I don’t really watch any TV now, but I believe I remember that the “wholesome” characters on Friends used to talk about their porn watching quite often. Putting an end to such normalization of porn would be a start.

They can’t make you drunk, but could no one call, text or message you, “Hey let’s go out and have a few”?
Maybe your friends aren’t into partying, and you are safe from that temptation, but we’re talking high school and college students here and I would be very surprised if youth party culture is not every bit as ubiquitous as I remember it in my misspent youth back in the Old Stoned Age.””

Nice side-step of avoiding the answer entirely. Kids have access to phones and images beaming 24×7 into their eyes in a way they don’t for physical liquids. You cannot imbibe the phone or TV to get drunk.

Images/VR are not the same thing, and obviously so. Even your straw-men are getting pretty sad at your treatment of them.

Just want to echo Western Gaijin, having spent time in Japan (work related) the demographic problems are likely caused by work culture not increased porn use. It was not uncommon to see suit-wearing businessmen sleeping on park benches in the center of Tokyo to save time on commuting home and back to work in a few hours. Also there is a lot of pressure to spend hours in the evening drinking and schmoozing with the bosses rather than going home to their wives or for the younger ones, having a dating life.

And in such a capitalistic country, Love (not just sex) itself has become a commodity. While many of the businessmen turn to porn to pacify their urges, others go to “hostess” bars where they can “date” women of their choosing. An interesting twist, these same hostesses (and sometimes prostitutes) then take their money and go to “host” bars with young, cute, pop-star-looking men to “date” them. A IFC film called “The Great Happiness Space” documents this.

In reference to your question about the exceptionally high percentage of seminarians admitting to a porn “addiction” I offer two thoughts:

(1) they are more likely to engage in it knowing that they have no hope of settling down with someone of the same or opposite sex (as they are committed to a life of celibacy).

Or, just as likely

(2) the actual they are more likely to view porn negatively (a forbidden treat that they “can’t quit”) as opposed to laypersons who may view it as a harmless tool that one outgrows or otherwise discards after finding someone. In other words, the seminarians and the laypersons may actually be using porn to the same extent but one group overwhelmingly considers it an affliction that is hard to control and the other group considers it an “extracurricular activity” (good or bad) that can be started or stopped when the real opportunity of a relationship comes along.

As others have pointed out, this is based on anecdotes, British anecdotes at that. The Brits do have a National Health Service – presumably they’d notice a dramatic rise in rectal injuries among young women. Yes some really weird stuff is just a few clicks away but it’s not clear young men’s sexual tastes are more esoteric than in the past.

The passivity of the young women is also suspect – I don’t recall women being so pliant and submissive in my youth and don’t really see anything in the past generation pushing women to be more deferential to men than before. Someone should probe a little on exactly why these women are so cooperative with such unpleasant experiences.

There’s another rather obvious reason why dating may have taken a turn for the worse for women over the past generation. Kids born in the 1960s and 1970s were much less likely to grow up in single mother households than kids in the 1980s and 1990s. And while children do worse in single mother households, boys seem to be particularly damaged. It may even explain the gender gap in education. The flip side is that it could also be leading to a shortage of dateable/marriageable men. So young women feel they have less control in sexual situations simply because good men are much rarer than they were a generation ago and women have correspondingly less leverage over them. That might be a better explanation than porn.

Keeping girls ignorant about sex won’t help. Telling them just to say no is not sufficient. They need to know that the sex shown in some porn is not loving or normal. In order to understand that we need to talk to them about what *is* normal and loving.

[NFR: That’s true. We’re having to have conversations with our kids that we wish we didn’t have to have at this young age, but which are necessary. Two of my kids were laughing in the car the other day when they saw something sexual on a billboard, and that occasioned a mini-lecture from Dad about how sex is a gift from God, but it’s the misuse of it that is sinful. Etc. — RD]

This is on my mind continually… I have three boys, the oldest a teenager. I am a high school teacher. I was raised Catholic, but fell away and married outside the church. We are raising our sons in the ELCA (Lutheran), but I am pulled back to mass continuously. I am trying to figure out what to do.

My current approach:
1. Limit technology like crazy. My son does not have any phone yet. He is the only child in his eighth grade without a phone.
2. We use Disney Circle on our router.
3. Have a list of activities to do that does not involve technology.
4. No computers, televisions or tablets in bedrooms
5. Begin in 1st or 2nd grade to talk to your children about the “seven deadly sins” and use the word “temptation” and “evil”
6. Talk about how people are always tempted to choose evil. Don’t talk to them about porn when very young, but one very effective way I address this topic in an age appropriate way is to say things like, ” In your life I hope you grow up and meet a wonderful girl and get married and have children”. However, even married people are tempted to kiss other people and hug and want to be with people they are not married to. How would you feel if Mommy did that with someone else but Daddy?” They are aghast, and they shout “No way Mommy!” I assure them that during my life I have felt that temptation. At first this was unbelievable to them, but it was important because they (being young) only see it as a grave injustice, and an affront to their security. However, by letting them know I have been tempted and resisted, they see it as both something that is real and will certainly happen and something that can be overcome for goodness.
7. Then, parallel this temptation with other temptations they have felt, and can identify with. Have you felt greed or sloth? (resounding “Yes!”–they have no trouble listing off the offenses of their brothers in this regard.) Have you experienced wrath and lost control? (shamefaced “Yes”).

I believe this primes them with understanding the nature of evil and temptation and that we must be ready for it.
Today we have lost this idea of being tempted by evil, and that we must struggle to be good.

I am a bit lost about how to approach my older son as he grows closer to 15. The conversation must be timed perfectly…eventually he will become the master of his own time, adrift in a sea of filth…and given the stats listed in this blog post, he will certainly succumb and need to fight.

I think to disarm a teen you could sit with them and look at something rather vanilla and describe how YOU find it titillating and stimulating and that it is not wrong to have these feelings, but that it is wrong to act on them. Tough…but I think teens harbor a very distorted idea that their parents are asexual.

Susan offered on July 13 information that seems to make a prima facie case for outlawing anal sexual practices, purely as a matter of public health, without discriminating on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, national origin, or sexual orientation. No matter any of that, its hazardous. It is also empirically apparent that the practice is un-natural, not because of God’s plan for sexuality, but because the muscles obviously evolved for, and are conditioned for, a purpose, and when used differently, tend to tear with painful consequences.

Now such a law would be laughably difficult to enforce with any rigor. But, it would at least set a standard. And, there could be a basis for the damaged person to sue the pants off of the perpetrator — with statutory provision that “consent” is not a defense. And maybe some criminal penalties lurking in the background for really egregious cases.

Sure, devoted stable same-sex male couples who want to take the time and trouble to go through all the preparations Susan outlines could get on with it for years, perhaps for a lifetime, with a wink and a nod. No aggrieved party, no litigation. But the onus would be on the people involved, those who try it out would have to keep one eye over their shoulder for possible consequences, and it wouldn’t be tried so often or so heedlessly.

“but I believe I remember that the “wholesome” characters on Friends used to talk about their porn watching quite often. Putting an end to such normalization of porn would be a start.”

In terms of public policy IMO this issue should be approached in a very direct and clear fashion so that the political opposition would be narrowed to just the content providers and tech companies.

Putting internet porn out of the reach of kids may only require that the tech companies themselves make some changes, but I suspect that content creators will fight this regardless of whether they are targeted directly, and in terms of political dynamics it might be beneficial to force the tech companies into bed with the pornographers. (Heh)

(Pretty good optics for the cause if you can portray it as loving grandmas and grandpas up against sleazy porn studios…)

A simple message like:

1) “Ubiquitous access to Internet pornography has become impossible for parents to monitor, so … ”

Keep in mind that the primary opponent in all of this may be Google, who controls an advertising empire and of course has the deepest of pockets. Awhile back I read somewhere that more than 15% of all web searches are porn related.

I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I would have been pretty disturbed as a child to hear either of my parents talk about being tempted to hug and kiss other people. And my parents didn’t even get along (eventually divorced). It would have frightened me, because even as a child I could recognize that I often fell into temptations (taking that cookie I’d been told not to, etc), and what’s to keep mom or dad from falling into temptation the next time one comes around?

And we don’t all have those temptations, so I would be concerned that speaking about temptations to adultery would normalize that to the children. I’m no more virtuous than the next person, but I can honestly say in nearly 26 years of marriage that I have never been tempted to hug, kiss, or engage in any kind of sexual activity with any man other than my husband. I’m not condemning (and I’m not saying my husband hasn’t experienced such temptations–he might have, for all I know, and given the visual way men are programmed, perhaps it’s nearly impossible for them not to experience those kinds of temptations)–temptations are just that, after all. But each of us has different temperaments and weaknesses and not all of us are going to experience the temptation to cheat on our spouses.

Parenting is tough, and it’s hard to know the right thing to do when it comes to raising kids to have healthy relationships. I’m putting a lot of hope into our modeling of a healthy relationship and happy marriage and giving relationship advice when it seems appropriate, but we won’t know if it all “worked” for decades.

I leave the porn talks with my boys to my husband, because the very last thing I would have ever wanted as a child or young teen would have been to have to listen to my father speak to me about pornography. Some things are just way too awkward to hear coming from a parent of the opposite sex.

What my father did do for me (despite all his many faults) was give me a huge sense of my self-worth. He thought I was amazing and wasn’t afraid to tell me so, and he always let me know I should never put up with anything less than the highest levels of respect coming from boys. He’s long dead, but I still regularly thank him for that gift, because the longer I live the more I understand how rare an experience that actually is among women.

I am a Christian millennial and from when I was 13 or 14 I was exposed to the stuff and had access. My parents had controls on our web browsers but they were ineffective. My friends showed me how to get around the barriers. Short story: you will *never* be able to protect your boys from it. They will find it and when they do, they will get addicted. I got sober later on, but not because I lacked access. The desire must change—the heart must change. We know they will see it, but how can boys be raised so they will turn away from it?

Those here who didn’t grow up in the age of internet don’t know how hard it is. 13 year old boys are stupid. If their friends show them something and say “check it out,” they will. A close childhood friend became addicted to “furry porn” (animal-human hybrids) when he was 14. It was years before he was interested in human girls. By the time boys understand the consequences of what they’re doing, they are already addicted—their desires already warped and deformed.

Sobriety is possible, but only barely. There is no support system: the world doesn’t think it’s a problem and the Church reviles addicts as perverts (not victims). For the love of mercy, do not demonize addicts. Whenever I heard a fiery sermon about porn, it reinforced in my mind: “no-one can ever find out.” Even though I’ve changed, I still feel that way. The addiction is a horrible curse, but all are guilty of adultery in their hearts. Do not pray “God, I thank you, that I am not like them.” Do not be afraid of them. Love them and invite them to a greater Love. Invite them to be free.

Treat them like the man born blind. Who sinned that the children became addicted to pornography, the children or their parents? “[T]his happened so that the works of God might be displayed in [them.]” The Church needs to get excited about healing: about turning hearts toward God and the love of things that are good.

Rod please please read “Addiction and Virtue” by Kent Dunnington before you write another column about any kind of addiction. It’s a short book and will fill your readers with hope instead of fear.

Addicts in recovery are the prophets of our time. We need to listen to them – and follow their direction when it comes to raising our children. They know how to return from the depths of our culture’s filth and nihilism back to the shores of virtue and sanity.

Addiction of any kind often has terrible consequences. There are many kinds.

The cost of alcohol is worse than porn. I’ve lost two dear friends from alcohol addiction, and nearly lost others. The gov’t stat is that 88,000 people die annually from alcohol related causes, with a significant chunk of that from addiction rather than accident.

My main point: there’s far more weight to the argument that alcohol should be made illegal. Children are inundated with alcohol commercials in public and in the media, liquor is sold in nearly every community.

If one goes along with Prohibition Part II: The Big One and says all addictive products should be made illegal, then I’d like to know the solutions for food addiction, shopping addiction, etc.

There are costs to living in a free society. The Terrible Cost of Porn is one. The MUCH MUCH more terrible cost of alcohol is another. We do what we can to minimize these costs.

P.S. I certainly did not intend to diminish the suffering of those dealing with porn addiction. I was only referring to the total societal cost of porn addiction relative to alcohol addiction (many thousands of deaths annually).

I recently saw the Netflix special Hot Girls Wanted on a recommendation. I cannot – I simply cannot – strongly enough recommend this film to anyone. It really is a must see to get some insight into the the exploitation, lies and destruction that pornographers unleash on the naive young girls they lure into their clutches. I cannot imagine that someone can watch this film and walk away with the idea that porn is ok.

For what it’s worth, since a number of people here have brought up Hot Girls Wanted, here’s a take on the matter from the libertarian columnist Elizabeth Nolan Brown (she writes a lot about porn, sex work, etc., from a generally favourable perspective), that has a very different take on the movie. It’s also worth stating that the reaction form people in the sex work industry has generally been quite negative.

“(At one point, Jade tells us about a school sex-ed lesson where the teacher had each kid put glue on a piece of paper, stick their paper to someone else’s, and then pull the papers apart. The point, Jade explains, was that like those papers, people lose pieces of themselves behind each time they have sex. The film treats this like poignant commentary on the toll of porn, rather than a screwed up thing to be teaching kids in sex ed.)”

Surprisingly a Guardian opinion piece has appeared responding to this very blog post in general agreement, but extending the argument to the “pornification” of American society in general, with Trump serving as symbol or (as I would say) escutcheon of this unprecedented height of pornification, of the saturation with the anti-spirit of porn of the American body physical, psychological, politic, cultural, and spiritual. But this in a sense also implies the “autistification” of the same, as porn reteaches or regresses the viewer/user to no longer view human persons as wholes but as (to put it crudely) holes, or rather as a frenetic collage of hyper-focused, magnified, disparate, disconnected, acephalous/decapitated, parts and no longer as a unified image and person with a visible physical cohesion and unity reflective of an unseen psychological, intellectual, and spiritual one. Just as the stereotype of the “autist” (in colloquial parlance) usually involves him or her not being able to look a psychologically more normative person in the eye, so too the porn user would doubtlessly be adverse to doing the same while under the onanistic trance or sway of a specific pornographic image, the more intense (i.e. graphic/grotesque) the image no doubt the more powerful its temporary autistifying or “autistophoric” effect on the user. But what if the autistogenic effect of pornography did not routinely end following the termination of arousal, what if the sexo-predatory glare, the psycho and sociopathical virtually dismembering stare, did not disappear post release, but rather remained leaving the user in turn “unreleased,” unfree to return to the taken-for-granted freedom from and non-scary normalcy of the non-grotesque, non-guttural, non-scatological, to wit, non-pornographic stare? A stare (“un regard”) that crushes, repels, repulses, and expels all thought, nay the very impulse or instinct of compassion, agape, altruism, trust, etc., in short, a stare that is the very image and reflect of a world, an internal personal one but nevertheless a world all the same, that has–however fleetingly–abandoned the immeasurably richer world of parents, grandparents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, of the systems, conditions, and particular embodied, inspirited, unique instances of higher human psychological, social, and moral reality for the endlessly reproducible image, simulacrum, film, screen, surface, superficiality of non-reproductive recyclatively evanescent desire? Pornography functions, operates, replicates in the normally unseen workings of its consumers’ minds and habits like a bacterium, a protozoa, or an insect (a cockroach perhaps), normally, usually it doesn’t get out of control, it doesn’t become a plague (or so we are still told), but what if one day the inveterate user (who might only be 19 yrs old) wakes up to find himself transformed into the grotesque parasite or the hideous cockroach he had been routinely moonlighting as while his parents, girlfriend, wife, weren’t watching? Worse still, what if he and all of us along with him wake up to find that what had formally been a non-pornography saturated society has suddenly become most thoroughly transformed, to wit colonized, by millions upon millions of heretofore unsuspecting users (of all ages and walks of life) who overnight have been metamorphosed into a physical form revelatory of the social, psychological, and spiritual parasites, predators, and degraded beings tout court they had virtually and visually (but no less actually as far as their neuro-reality is concerned) been moonlighting as during the sociopathy-enshrouding darkness of quotidian, suburban American night?

I am willing to buy into young dude’s getting influenced by porn. I find it a much bigger stretch to blame porn on females consenting to anal sex. Have the genetically redesigned girls? I have very strong memories of the fact that it was the girls who decided who they went out with and what the did. All of a sudden, females lost the ability to refuse unwanted sexual demands? I guess my generation was born 40 years to early. Unless you were Joe Stud, the chances where slim on having any sex because girls decided it, not us.

I can’t say I am right on this. Who really knows how much is genetic and how much is culture? I am just saying there has to be a lot more to this than just porn. Despite not have the Internet, I had no trouble at all assembling a collection of hard core porn as a kid and friends even had 8mm films. So how come we didn’t get any of that tail? No, sir, porn alone does not explain it all.

I would also like to address another facet, personally. I have had a lifelong affair with porn. I love it. I watch it everyday. I collect it. That said, none of that ever effected me in such a manner that rendered me incapable of a normal sexual relationship or normal platonic relationships in my social or professional life. In fact, I STRONGLY credit my easy access to porn and girls of high quality for fantasy for me maintaining a 23 year marriage. Right now, she has terminal cancer. My fantasy life is strong enough to keep me from having to realize my fantasies in reality. I would say that if porn was eliminated, I would more likely than not stray.